Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:31PM
from the customer-feedback-at-work dept.

Kurtz'sKompund writes "Canonical, the company that supports Ubuntu Linux, is trying to work out a deal with hardware vendors such as Dell to make Ubuntu available pre-installed on servers. 'Canonical, despite obviously supporting such a deal, had little to do with Dell's decision. Dell said it was merited by customer demand. Likewise, the decision of whether Ubuntu Server will ship pre-installed will be determined the same way.'"

I wonder how many of you want pre-installed operating systems - any operating system. It seems to me that most installations have a central installation service (kickstart, jumpstart, etc) and would like boxes to be configured with certain parameters and niceties, such as partition and block sizing, configuration files, kernel versions, cfEngine keys, local accounts, etc... I really am curious, as I have never used the factory-installed operating system. Even if it came with one, the first item on the 'to do' list was to wipe the drive and start over.

I'm currently running Debian stable on all my servers. Why would I want to get the next with Ubuntu? Would it be just as stable?

The install with netinst is very fast. What takes a long time is all the configuration of the needed services, and customization (backup scripts, various checks and email alerts, etc. In short everything one adds to/etc/cron*). So I wouldn't really gain any time.

Am I not seeing some advantage that a pre-installed Ubuntu would bring? Maybe compatibility with newer hardware. I had to use backports a few times, and that was a hassle. Any other advantage I'm overlooking?

If it comes with an install CD with all of the necessary drivers included... awesome!

Actually something I liked from the Compaq SmartStart. You would start your installation with the Compaq CD, tell it which OS, it would create a small drivers partition and manage the installation process setting up the hardware drivers.

#4. Stupid admin problem. Yeah, like there's anything Canonical or Dell can do to prevent that.

That seems to be what the GP is talking about in terms of support. On the desktop you'll get questions like "I bought this computer with this newfangled leenooks thingy, how do I play my card game?"

On the server, you get questions that have nothing at all to do with the stupidity of the admin. Like "When the database has written 1 GB of data to the drive, the system stops responding and has to be powercycled causing a lot of data corruption, what's going on?" (true story, the answer is "plug in a PS/2 mouse [64.233.169.104]") Multiply that by however many Dell sells, and the grandparent has a point: can they handle it?

I want a live CD that has drivers for all of the hardware, and applications to test with. This way if the machine acts up, I can put the install CD in, and know immediately whether the problem is hardware or software related. Preferably the disk would have recovery applications, and the ability to connect to the manufacturer for screen sharing initiated by the user.

Of course, for installing on a hard disk, I want to make my own choices in hardware.

Sorry, I should have said that I want this supported by the hardware manufacturer. If I call them saying that hardware has failed, I don't want to have to argue about it, and I definitely don't want to have to format my drive to prove it isn't a software problem. I want to put in a CD that the manufacturer agrees will load the hardware into a usable state. If the computer fails to function, then there would be no argument about whether it is hardware or software.

I'm kind of surprised Dell hasn't caught on to that idea yet. If they sell Dell hardware and make sure Ubuntu has all the drives they could load up a custom live CD with all sorts of troubleshooting goodies. Then rather then asking a zillion stupid questions they could point you to the CD if you have to call with broken hardware.. no matter what OS you chose to use! Live CD can read the hard drive, connect to the internet, have 3D desktops, etc.... they're far from tech only "recovery" discs they used to be. Moves like that would go a long way to making regular users see Linux as Legit.